System for interfacing one or more intelligent peripheral units with a weaving loom or other textile machine

Abstract: The system comprises: a master unit (A) which is interfaced on one side with the controller (C) of the loom over dedicated wires and/or a serial line, and on the other side with the peripheral unit or units (P₁, P₂, P n ) over a synchronous serial line; a set of slave units (B₁, B₂, B n ), each of which is an integral part of a respective peripheral unit (P₁-P n ) capable of sending data over the synchronous serial line and of receiving data from the master unit (A) over the same interface line; a serial line bus (BU) that includes: dedicated unidirectional signals (PCS) that connect the master unit (A) to each slave unit for selection; a first common signal (MOSI) that constitutes a unidirectional data line for transmission from the master unit (A) to the selected slave unit (B); a second common signal (MISO) that forms a second unidirectional data line for transmission from the selected individual slave unit (B) to the master unit (A); and a third common signal (SCK) that forms a unidirectional line for transferring to the slave units the synchronization clock pulses emitted by the master unit.

Description: The present invention relates to a system for interfacing one or more intelligent peripheral units with a weaving loom or other textile machine. Conventional weaving looms, and other similar textile machines, use peripheral units such as, typically, weft feeders for gripper looms, weft pre-measurers for jet looms, brakes for automatic weft tension control and the like, all of which are controlled electronically, and therefore briefly termed "intelligent", and are interfaced with sensors and/or actuators which reside on the loom. In known electronic applications, for weaving looms or other textile machines, interfacing between the above intelligent peripheral units and the loom is provided by means of digital signals or in any case signals of the "on-off" (yes-no) type with dedicated wires whose number is equal to the number of signals to be transmitted to and from each peripheral unit. It is evident that this known interfacing system has obvious drawbacks due to the multiplication of the dedicated wires in proportion to the increase in the number of peripheral units associated with the loom and of functions performed by each unit and controlled by the sensors and/or actuators of said loom. In order to obviate these drawbacks it has already been proposed to use a serial asynchronous connection between the loom and the peripheral units, but so far the applications that have been produced have failed to yield satisfactory results not because of the complexity of the circuits residing on the loom and on the peripheral units, but essentially because of the slowness of their transmission, the baud rate of which is generally lower than, or equal to, 38,400 baud. Accordingly, the serial interfaces produced so far are suitable only for transmitting signals related to the medium- and long-term operation of the loom, such as the setup and configuration signals and the like, but are fully inadequate for real-time data transmission, which however is indispensable to perform the instantaneous control of many functions both of the peripheral units and of the loom, such as for example control of the modulated-action electronic weft brakes in feeders for gripper looms, release of the electromagnetic retention of the weft in feeders for jet looms, and real-time control of the drivers of feeder motors and the like. In order to provide real-time data transmission between the loom controller and peripheral units such as pre-feeders, electronic brakes, motor drivers and the like, the current trend is to provide a two-way connection between said controller and said peripheral units on a single network that operates at high speed and has negligible transmission delays. However, this entails the use of highly complex protocols and consequently of equally complex and expensive electric circuits that reside both on the loom and on the peripheral units, and therefore this network connection is economically disadvantageous. It is known from EP-A-0145319 a communication interfacing system suitable for interfacing a master unit and a plurality of parts. In this known system data transmission and reception are carried out sequentially and with dedicated clock signal lines. A principal aim of the present invention is to eliminate the drawbacks of the above described known interfacing systems, and within the scope of this general aim the present invention has the important object of providing a system for mutually interfacing a weaving loom -- or other textile machine -- and one or more intelligent peripheral units that is structurally very simple but can transmit signals bidirectionally substantially in real time, with delays on the order of hundredths of a millisecond. Another important object of the invention is to provide an interfacing system that allows to use peripheral units without alterations, no adaptation to the communication line being required for said peripheral units. An additional object of the present invention is to provide a selective interface connection, i.e. a connection that rules out any possibility of conflict among signals directed to/from the individual intelligent peripheral units, the transmission of any priority signal (dominant bit) being however excluded. With this aim, these important objects and others in view, which will become apparent from the following detailed description, there is provided, according to the present invention, a system and a method for interfacing one or more intelligent peripheral units with a weaving loom or other textile machine, as defined in claim 1 and claim 5, respectively. The master unit starts communication and uninterruptedly polls the slave units to allow them to transmit and receive any information in a cyclic manner. If there is no information to be transmitted, the polled slave unit issues a conventional signal that allows the master unit to pass on to the next slave unit. The invention is now described in detail with reference to the accompanying drawing, given by way of non-limitative example and illustrating the synchronous serial interfacing layout according to the invention between a textile machine, particularly a weaving loom, and a plurality of intelligent peripheral units. In the drawing, the reference letter A designates the master unit, which is formed by a digital circuit of any degree of complexity that comprises, for example, discrete and/or sequential logic circuits (microprocessors). The master unit A is interfaced on one side with a loom controller C from which it receives, and to which it transmits, over dedicated wires K and/or a serial line, a set of signals produced by corresponding sensors and fed to corresponding actuators of the loom by means of said controller. By means of a network H, the master unit A can also be connected to other similar looms (or textile machines) which are controlled in parallel. On the other side, the master unit A is bidirectionally interfaced with a plurality of slave units B 1 -B 2 -B n , each of which resides on a corresponding intelligent peripheral unit P 1 -P 2 -P n ; the peripheral units comprise for example weft feeders optionally equipped with electronic weft brakes, or weft measurers if the loom is of the jet type. Connection between the master unit A and the slave units B is provided by means of a serial interface of the SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) type described in the publication "QSM Queued Serial Module" by Motorola, which is capable of transmitting all the information exchanged bidirectionally by said master and slave units; this information is decoded beforehand when it is directed from the master unit to the slave units and is conversely encoded when it is directed from the slave units to the master unit. According to the invention, the bus BU for synchronous serial interfacing comprises: a series of dedicated unidirectional signals PCS that connect the master unit A to each slave unit B; in the direction from A to B, they select the peripheral unit involved in the communication. The master unit A enables, with the methods specified hereinafter, each slave unit B by means of a corresponding dedicated selection signal; a first signal MOSI which is common to all the slave units and constitutes a unidirectional data line for transmitting binary information from the master unit A to the generic selected slave unit Bx; a second signal MISO which is also common to all the slave units and constitutes a unidirectional line for transmitting binary information from the generic selected slave unit Bx to the master unit A; a third signal SCK which is common to all the slave units and forms a unidirectional line, in the direction from A to B, for transferring the clock pulses of the serial data transmission to and from the slave units, respectively over the lines MOSI and MISO. In the interfacing according to the invention, only the master unit A can initiate communication, and in order to allow the slave units B 1 to B n to transmit any data to the master unit, said master unit queries them in a cyclic and uninterrupted manner with the known method termed "polling". Transfer of information from master to slave over the line MOSI and in the opposite direction over the line MISO occurs simultaneously. If the generic slave unit Bx has no data to transmit, it emits an NTS signal (nothing to say) to the master unit A, which in turn sends an NTS signal to the polled slave unit if it has no signals to send to that slave unit. Data is sent as digital messages constituted by a preset number of bits that is chosen as small as possible within the limits allowed by the need to detect possible incorrect transmissions and to transmit a sufficient amount of information. A standard message that meets these requirements is advantageously constituted by 32 bits. A possible long and complex message that however relates to the medium- and long-term operation of the interfaced machines is split into multiple frames of 32 bits each, transmitted in succession during each polling operation. With the synchronous serial interfacing layout according to the present invention, the maximum transfer delay for each message is obtained from the following relation: RT = L . N B where RT is the transfer delay, L is the number of bits that form the message, B is the baud rate in bits/second and N is the number of connected slave units. Assuming that L=32, B=4 M baud, and N=8, RT is equal to 0.064 ms, which is an interval abundantly sufficient to transfer signals of the specified type substantially in real time. The messages related to the medium- or long-term operation of the interfaced machines have a lower priority than those related to the immediate operation of said machine. The higher the number of peripheral units P 1 to P n associated with the loom, the more advantageous the described interfacing system becomes. Furthermore, said peripheral units must be as spatially close as possible to each other, so as to simplify physical connections between said units and the master unit A of the loom, thus avoiding complicated and expensive signal transmission systems such as optical fibers and the like. Where technical features mentioned in any claim are followed by reference signs, those reference signs have been included for the sole purpose of increasing the intelligibility of the claims and accordingly such reference signs do not have any limiting effect on the scope of each element identified by way of example by such reference signs.

Claims: A system for interfacing one or more intelligent peripheral units with a weaving loom or other textile machine, characterized in that it comprises: a master unit (A) constituted by a logic circuit adapted to be connected on one side with a loom controller (C), over dedicated wires and/or a serial line, and on the other side with said one or more intelligent peripheral units (P 1 , P 2 , P n ); a set of slave units (B 1 , B 2 , B n ), each of which is an integral part of a respective peripheral unit of said peripheral units (P 1 , P 2 , P n ), said slave units being constituted by logic circuits capable of sending and of receiving data to/from said master unit; a serial bus which connects bidirectionally said master unit to each of said one or more slave units, said serial bus comprising: signal lines for dedicated signals (PCS1, PCS2, PCSn) which connect the master unit (A) to each slave units (B 1 , B 2 , B n ) in order to select the individual slave units; a signal line for a first signal (MOSI), common to all said slave units, for the unidirectional transmission of binary information from the master unit (A) to the selected slave unit (B 1 , B 2 , B n ); a signal line for a second signal (MISO), common to all said slave units, for the unidirectional transmission of binary information from said selected slave unit (B 1 , B 2 , B n ) to said master unit (A); and a signal line for a third signal (SCK), common to all said slave units, for the unidirectional transmission to said slave units of clock pulses emitted by said master unit (A), whereby between said master unit (A) and each selected slave unit, the said transmission and reception being carried out simultaneously. A system according to claim 1, characterized in that said binary information bidirectionally exchanged between said slave units (B 1 , B 2 , B n ) and said master unit (A) are data messages formed by a preset number of bits. System according to claim 2, characterized in that said preset number of bits is equal to 32. System according to claim 1, characterized in that said serial bus arranged between said master unit (A) and said slave units (B 1 , B 2 , B n ) is of the Serial Peripheral Interface type. A method of interfacing one or more intelligent peripheral units (P 1 , P 2 , P n ) to a master unit (A), said master unit being connected to a loom controller of a weaving loom or other textile machine, the method being characterized by comprising the steps of: cyclically and continuously polling slave units (B 1 , B 2 , B n ) each of which is an integral part of a respective peripheral unit of said peripheral units (P 1 , P 2 , P n ), to transmit or receive any data messages to or from said slave units, said transmission and reception being carried out simultaneously by a serial bus bidirectionally between a selected slave unit and said master unit (A), the transmission from said master unit (A) to said slave units being carried out over a first signal line (MOSI) of said serial bus, the reception from said slave units being carried out over a second signal line (MISO) of said serial bus, a third signal line (SCK) of said serial bus being used for the unidirectional transmission to said slave units of clock pulses output by said master unit (A); and decoding the data messages directed from the master unit (A) to the slave units, before delivering said data messages to the slave units, and encoding the data messages directed from each slave unit to said master unit (A) before delivering said data messages to said master unit (A). A method according to claim 5, characterized in that said data messages bidirectionally exchanged between said master unit (A) and said slave units (B 1 , B 2 , B n ) are formed by a preset number of bits. A method according to claim 6, characterized in that said preset number of bits is equal to 32.

Inventors: ZENONI PIETRO, ZENONI, PIETRO
Applicants: LGL ELECTRONICS SPA, L.G.L. ELECTRONICS S.P.A.
Application year: 1994
Main classification: G05B19
IPC codes: G05B19